Our Manifesto
IN THE MOTHERING WORLD, WE DO MORE THAN BREAK THE RULES.
We’re worse than outlaws. We’re infamous. We are teen mothers, women with multiple children by multiple men. We are women who smoked crack, sold sex, stripped, and so on. We are your welfare queens and all the things that polite society shuns. And we’re mothers.
ON THE OTHER HAND, SOME OF US ARE “RESPECTABLE.”
The circumstances that made us mothers are not. Our children are born from incest and rape.
Sometimes it’s the conditions shaping our mothering that make us disgraceful. We have lost our babies to the system—social services, prisons, and so on… We’ve survived domestic violence.
Some of us are living with poverty. Others are divorcées.
AND SOMETIMES, WE ARE A COMBINATION OF BOTH.
We are disrespectful AND we bear children under circumstances that taint us.
We're not flaunting ourselves. We’re just done apologizing. We’re done whitewashing or downplaying our experiences. We’re done being confined to stereotypes. And we're done buying into your idea of a happy ending.
We have our own.
OUR GRIT IS WHAT MAKES US TRULY INFAMOUS.
We survived. And we refuse to let our struggles be in vain.
They empower our mothering, make us activists, fuel our education, shape our relationships. For some of us, these experiences inspire our practices as teachers, attorneys, doctors, nurses, actors, photographers, CNAs…writers. For others, they push us to own businesses…and ourselves.
WE MAKE A DIFFERENCE.
Come be a witness.
Our Signature…
Our work is not about “the struggle” or brokenness. Other people can tell that tale. It’s about spinning hay into gold, mobilizing pain into power. And it’s about refusing to cut off pieces of ourselves, experiences and stories to fit into someone else’s box.
It’s about our beauty.
It’s about owning the part of our narrative (if it’s true) that people try to shame us with. Reclaiming our story— boldly and unapologetically— because no one can tell it better than us.
Besides, it's a damn good story…an adventure, a hero’s quest. It’s a story about a mother (or other mother) who went to the belly of hell and brought something good back.
Nothing’s Wasted
Our lore is part of our power. The challenges that some thought would break us have forged us.
And just to be clear, we don’t succeed despite what we’ve gone through. We succeed because of it.
…Nothing’s wasted